It comes to something when a broken car window calls for a special investigation by the nation’s chief police offer. And why on earth is Cameron so upset about it (PM condemns “feral” protest, Guardian 11 December)?  I should have thought  the Prime Minister more than conforms to the stereotype of the toff of whom it was rightly said: “Like many of the upper class, he loves the sound of breaking glass”. 

When I was an undergraduate at Oxford the bloods at the House used to have a whale of a time tossing magnums of champers, full as well as empty, down into Peckwater Quad from their upper-crust windows.  The noise as these crashed to smithereens on the gravel beneath was most gratifying to the ear, and, if the fellows were exceptionally lucky,  they might even have the joy of seeing one grounded on the pate of some ill-fated scout as he wended his unsuspecting way to the back lodge.

 

You see it’s one thing if the Bullingdon set trash a set of rooms on the night of a feast. It’s quite something else when the serfs try to ape their betters. That at which the Prime Minister  – OE and lineal descendant of William IV –  correctly takes umbrage is the fact that the lower orders seem to have taken a shine to this glass-smashing jape when they ought to be sitting quietly at home ingesting their bread and dripping and loading their coal into the bath.

 

And quite right too, I say. What is the world coming to?  Why, I haven’t seen a forelock tugged in weeks.